A thread in the Pit seems to have been closed by the SDMB itself “due to a large number of community flags” for at least four hours.
That thread is far off the rails and surely could get closed, but I’m not sure I’ve seen this happen before. I imagine the function is there for spammers and obscene or adult material?
I believe it is there for when the mods are not currently active, e.g. overnight or early morning. Though I’m surprised it didn’t just hide the offending post, which is what it normally does. (Hide in this case meaning you have to click through to read it.)
It’s a Discourse feature to allow the thread to be assessed by mods before it gets any worse. It also (theoretically) allows participants to cool off, assuming (as always) that the participants were involved in good faith and just got carried away.
Mods here are usually quick to intervene before threads get that contested, and I have to assume it’s a rare thread here that gets reported so much it goes into auto lockdown.
I wonder how many flags were generated for that thread. One from me for sure.
The pit is the forum most likely for this to occur in. As several post have got flagged and some many times, it tripped the rarely seen safety.
It is waiting on @Miller to sort it out. No rush or need for any other Mod to intervene.
ETA:
It appears to have 7 flags, to answer the above question. But I might have miscounted as I’m on my phone.
That is way fewer than I would have expected to trigger the auto-close! Anyway, thanks!
I’ve handled the problematic posts and re-opened the thread.
Don’t forget to wash your hands!